Moly Mines on track for first shipment

Moly Mines
shares rose on Thursday after the company said it was on track to make its first shipment of iron ore from its $10 million a year Spinifex Ridge in Western Australia in early December.

The molybdenum explorer said it had reached a milestone with the successful wet commissioning of its Utah Point shiploader and berth at Port Hedland last weekend.

About 70,000 tonnes of
Atlas Iro
n’s ore was shipped on the bulk panamax vessel, the Bergen Max. Moly Mines also said it had awarded the ore haulage contract for the 1 million tonne Spinifex Ridge project to Bullbuck. Ore haulage to Moly Mines’ stockpile area at the Utah Point facility is expected to begin in November.

Moly shares are up 38.7 per cent since hitting a 52-week low at 53¢ on June 30, but have shed 41.7 per cent over the past 12 months. Moly is one of the biggest explorers of molybdenum and signed a key deal with private Chinese group Hanlong in early 2009 to secure debt and equity capital. The most common use for the robust metal is to toughen up stainless steel, but molybdenum can also be used as an alloy in many things from rifle barrels to filaments for light bulbs. The market for molybdenum was given a boost when derivatives trading in metal began on the LME in February. The price of molybdenum on the LME yesterday was $US34,400 a tonne.

Perth-based
IMX Resources
said more wide nickel-copper intersections had been received from its new Ntaka Hill Sleeping Giant zone at the Nachingwea project in Tanzania. The project is a 25:75 joint venture between IMX and Canada-based Continental Nickel. An intersection of 53.1 metres at 0.74 per cent nickel and 0.15 per cent copper, including two higher grade intervals of 3.45 metres at 2.09 per cent nickel and 0.53 per cent copper and 7.1 metres at 1.65 per cent nickel and 0.22 per cent, was located in a hole drilled to test for northern extensions.

IMX is implementing a $4 million exploration program at Nachingwea. In the current program, 35 diamond drill holes, totalling 4722.7 metres, were completed at Ntaka Hill, and one 266.1 metre drill hole was completed at the Lionja target, eight kilometres to the south. The Foreign Investment Review Board approved Sichuan Taifeng’s acquisition of up to 19.9 per cent of IMX in July.

Shares in
FerrAus
, an emerging developer of iron ore in the East Pilbara region, fell 4 per cent to 82.5¢ after announcing new results from ongoing reverse circulation drilling at the Mirrin Mirrin prospect at Davidson Creek. The results indicated iron mineralisation was continuous along strike to the east and west, as well as to the north. The current Mirrin Mirrin inferred resource of 30.8 million tonnes at 58.3 per cent iron is expected to increase with an updated resource estimate planned for November.